steelbikeguy

Many years ago, the British magazine Cycling Plus ran a column called "Design Classics". It was written by Hilary Stone, and discussed various bikes, brands, innovations, etc. from the years gone by. I found them to be quite interesting and saved the columns and later scanned them.

Mr SpeedofLight has been doing a good job of sharing old issues of Bicycling magazine, so I thought I might do the same with the Design Classics columns. I'd like to try changing the format somewhat, and intend to post the columns sequentially in a single thread. This will keep them all grouped, making it easier for readers to browse through them. If there is a problem with this method, please let me know.

With that introduction, let me post two columns about some very early cycles.

Steve in Peoria

edit: quick description.... 1885 Rover Safety bicycle. This is an early safety bicycle, i.e. not a high wheel Ordinary that cause a great fall. The front wheel is still larger than the rear, and uses solid tires instead of pneumatic



edit: quick description.... 1930's era bike built by Maurice Selbach after completing his racing career.

nlerner

Very cool. Thanks, Steve!

steelbikeguy

My pleasure!
I'm doing it for purely selfish reasons.... it helps justify my (modest) pack-rat tendencies, at least in terms of saving magazine articles over the decades.

Steve in Peoria

steelbikeguy

another vintage bike with interesting gear changing mechanisms!
edit: A quick summary: A 1950's race bike built by Andy Stone, called the Paragon. It uses the Super Champion Osgear gear changer system that uses metal fingers to just shove the chain left and right across the freewheel. At least you can shift while pedaling forward! The front derailleur is a Simplex rod operated design. The bike sports two handlebar mounted aluminum water bottles.

Steve in Peoria

obrentharris 

Many thanks Steve!
Please keep them coming.
Brent

SpeedofLite 

Please consider writing a descriptive title and/or a few introductory words about each new article you post so as to make the topic of the article searchable.
Otherwise, I don't think it will be all that easy for others to find this information unless they are also regular readers of the thread.
Or maybe there are other ways to embed this information in your posts using tags or keywords that identify the various topics without having to provide text in the title or article, but you write very well so I'm thinking a short description would be natural for you.

steelbikeguy

that's a good point!
I'm not sure how much searching people do, but I've had BF threads pop up among google searches, so it certainly has value.

Steve in Peoria

steelbikeguy

Glad that you enjoy it! The articles really do highlight some lesser known treasures, or provide some details on subjects that many of us have heard of.
Checking my files, I've got about 90 of these articles that I scanned. I'm thinking of posting them twice a week, so figure 45 weeks of stuff to come.

Roger St. Pierre wrote a "Retro" column for Cycling Plus, covering the cycling culture of years gone by. This is largely about racing and the people involved in it. Pretty neat stuff too! I've got around 40 of those articles, so that'll give me something else to share after I've finished up with the Design Classics.

Steve in Peoria

steelbikeguy

Backstedt's Roubaix Bianchi (summary):
This is the bike that Magnus Backstedt won the 2004 Paris-Roubaix on. The design deviated from the standard aluminum tubing of the day, opting instead to use titanium in order to reduce the vibration from the legendary race route.




Steve in Peoria

obrentharris 

Nice! I like the mix of older and newer bikes.
Brent

steelbikeguy

The Brompton folding bike has been a favorite of multi-mode commuters for decades. The speed and ease of folding has been a key factor in its success.




Steve in Peoria

steelbikeguy

Brooks B.17 saddle
Dating from the 1890's, the B.17 is the rare bike component that has been in production for over a century. There have been many varieties of this model over the years, varying in width, finish and intended purpose.
on a personal note.. these have been great on a couple of my bikes!




Steve in Peoria

SuperLJ

This is great stuff, Steve. Thanks for posting, and keep ‘em coming!

steelbikeguy

BSA paratrooper's bike
Designing a bike for the military requires a number of unique and clever changes. Folding frames, pedals that retract... it almost sounds like a military Brompton!




Steve in Peoria

steelbikeguy

Campagnolo Record hubs --- The classic of classics!!!
These are the hubs that set a high bar for quality. The cups and cones produced a distinctively smooth feel. The quick release mechanisms, in conjunction with the serrated locknuts, provided a secure grip on even heavily chromed dropouts.



Steve in Peoria

repechage

And the Velo-retro timeline is still alive. Pretty amazing for a web resource.
Remember Campyonly?

steelbikeguy

Chuck Schmidt used to be quite active on the CR list, and it was amazing how often someone would answer a random question by pointing to the appropriate entry in the velo-retro timeline. I really should go back and review it. Of course, Chuck also sells a nifty variety of classic logo t-shirts, musettes, etc. Cool stuff!

CampyOnly was another blog I used to follow closely. Weird that Campy bits were the standard components for so long and didn't seem to change, except that there were a ton of tiny changes. The CPSC changes complicated things a lot, such as the odd change to the right crank arm and the resultant change to axle lengths. There are also the details about thin and thick bottom bracket cups. It makes my brain hurt.

Steve in Peoria

repechage

Too bad there was no buyer for Campyonly, it was even cited in Campagnolo's own 75th anniversary book. I have one, it is OK, really would prefer a copy of the Giant and the File.
Why did they not just reprint that?

trucklet

Thank you for scanning and putting these up!

steelbikeguy

Campy Gran Sport rear derailleur
It wasn't the first derailleur to use a parallelogram, but it was easy to set up, robust, went on to great success in racing.



Steve in Peoria

steelbikeguy

The Bicycle Chain
The humble component made up of hundreds of pieces, each made with great precision. It was a key element in making the safety bicycle possible.




Steve in Peoria

grant40

Never seen an Osgear Super Champion using 2 chainrings.

steelbikeguy

I don't know how common it was to use two chainrings with these "finger" type of gear changer mechanisms. I recall seeing photos of bikes equipped with Campagnolo Cambio Corsa gear changers with double chainrings. Considering that the rear quick release has to be loosened in order to change gears, it must have been quite an operation to shift in front!

Steve in Peoria

Trakhak

I imagine that the Campy Record brakeset will feature in one of those columns. I remember clearly how shocked we were when one of the local racers casually rolled up with a set of those as part of the complete Campy group on his brand new Atala. Sidepulls! All the pro-level road bikes of the time used centerpull Universals or Weinmanns or Mafacs, so we had taken it for granted that sidepulls were beneath contempt. Cognitive dissonance!

steelbikeguy

I hate to spoil the excitement of waiting to find out what is still to come, but... no.... there is no article on the Campy sidepull brakes.
The quick release mechanism was quite nice, and the levers were a step up from the basic Weinmanns that I know and tolerate, but were the brakes themselves really great? Especially compared to the premium paid when they replaced the more pedestrian Weinmanns or Mafacs? Didn't Schwinn charge an extra couple hundred dollars for that option on the Paramount? (although I could be imagining that).

There are articles on the GB (Gerry Burgess) sidepulls and the Mafac Racer centerpulls, as well as an article on Campy Record pedals, in the future. All in all, to do more articles on Campagnolo might have been a bit too preferential towards them. If it were up to me, I think that the Campy two-bolt seatpost might be worth an article. It was one of the first to offer the ability to really fine tune the tilt.

Steve in Peoria